Gospel Reflection on Luke 14:1, 7-14

August 31, 2025

One sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come, and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

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From the time we're very little, we construct an image of who we are. We select from the many experiences. The ones that bring us the most attention, the most praise.

And we become very attached to this idea of who we are. That we are this kind, thoughtful, talented, caring, generous person. And that idea gradually becomes for us our ideal. This is who we should be. And we accept the burden of becoming this ideal person. That also means working hard to eliminate behaviors that don't fit the ideal.

And that's one of the problems at surfaces. Everything we exclude from our definition of ourselves becomes a kind of threat.

And secondly, we become preoccupied with 'how do I make this ideal-me last'?

So fear and yearning become the atmosphere for our guardian self.

Fear is the footprint of our attempt to make ourselves invulnerable.

And longing is the footprint of our attempt to make ourselves permanent.

The more we create our identity based on how different we are and separate from one another, the more we see ourselves as a commodity competing in a world of limited resources. And because that's how we see the world and see ourselves. Our attitude quickly becomes reduced to greed and violence and domination. We need more power and more possessions. This fear always remains.

And we see it this fear and this longing at work in our attitude to hospitality. Who should I invite to the party? Will this person help me to be secure or are they going to be a threat to my security?

When we think like the world thinks, we experience that we are against one another,

we're hostile towards one another. But in the community of Jesus, we're invited to see that we're all connected, that we possess a communal identity, that our feelings for other human beings emerge into a kind of common consciousness.

What does this look like? Well, if you were to imagine looking at the petals of a great flower,

a beautiful rose, for instance, at the tips that petals are all separate, they don't overlap, they don't even touch. But as we approach the center of the flower, we overlap more and more with a greater number of petals.

Once we start to think of ourselves, that we really are the poor, the blind, the lost, the main; when we start to think of ourselves as like everyone else, we begin to see and include more places where we overlap. Until finally at the center we overlap every petal.

This new consciousness even includes people who are distant from us. It shouldn't be strange that we should know what is in someone's heart who is far from us, because we are connected at deeper levels than we could ever imagine.

In the early church, we catch a glimpse of these discoveries. Baptism in the early church was seen as illumination, as awakening to the awareness that God and I are one.

Illumination caused people to stop seeing everything as outside themselves, to stop seeing persons as separate beings and begin to see other people as beings who are inside one another. We became aware that we are part of God and that God lives in us. We participate in God, and we are part of a new communion of brothers and sisters.

This new unity is vertical and horizontal, and it includes two actions, pouring ourselves out, emptying ourselves out, and becoming food for others.

The world pushes us to see ourselves as separate from one another, and so we try to quell this fear by seeking possessions, honors, acclaim. Christians place the outcome of their lives in the hands of God. They live permitting the Lord to choose their reward.

We need to allow the Lord to look after the reward of our existence.

Jesus offers us a way of peace of living as children of a loving and providential Father. Instead of constantly seeking, 'how can I be secure? How can I secure a higher place?'

Imagine the peace of knowing that the Father in His love will one day assign us to the place that is right for us. And when that day comes, we will feel right at home.